Depending on what games you played, mac was a decent alternative for gaming. Blizzard treated mac as a first class platform for many years, indie games using multi platform engines often targeted it, and porting studios like aspyr would bring over a few big titles here and there.

Linux was in a similar boat before proton really opened things up, but with even less support than mac from game devs.

Yeah apparently, or at least mac users with steam installed

Yup, I play a few on my work laptop (not my choice of hardware/software). A lot of stuff doesn't work, but as an occasional time-waster when I'm taking a break, it works okay.

I mostly just play quick Risk matches, but there's an okay selection of games. It basically feels like Steam on Linux back when they first launched the Linux client before Proton a thing. It kinda sucks, but there's enough selection for what I need it for.

These days I just keep my Steam Deck at my desk and play games that way instead. But before I got my Steam Deck, I played natively on macOS.